Recently, a fuel cell vehicle or a vehicle utilizing hydrogen gas, which is simply referred to as “vehicle” hereinafter, is being developed. Along with this development, a hydrogen station for feeding hydrogen gas to a tank of a vehicle is also being developed. For example, Patent Literature 1 discloses a hydrogen station including a pressure storage bank unit having a plurality of pressure storage banks, a compressor for supplying compressed hydrogen gas to the respective pressure storage banks, a coupler used to feed the hydrogen gas from the pressure storage banks to a chamber (i.e., tank) of a vehicle, and a controller for controlling the feeding order of hydrogen gas to the chamber of the vehicle from the pressure storage banks. The controller allows a specified pressure storage bank to feed the hydrogen gas to the chamber of the vehicle, and then allows another pressure storage bank having a higher pressure than the specified pressure storage bank to feed the hydrogen gas to the chamber of the vehicle when a pressure difference between the pressure of the specified pressure storage bank and the pressure of the chamber of the vehicle reaches a predetermined value or greater. In other words, the controller shifts the pressure storage banks one after another to feed the hydrogen gas to the chamber of the vehicle in accordance with a pressure difference between a pressure of each pressure storage bank and a pressure of the chamber of the vehicle.
Meanwhile, recently, in addition to reduction in the delivery time of hydrogen gas to a vehicle to not more than three minutes, it is being demanded to shorten the time from the finish of a hydrogen gas delivery to a first vehicle to the start of a hydrogen gas delivery to a second vehicle. However, in the hydrogen station shown in Patent Literature 1, after the hydrogen gas delivery to a first vehicle is finished, hydrogen gas is usually supplied from the compressor to each pressure storage bank to fully charge or fill all the pressure storage banks with hydrogen gas, and a hydrogen gas delivery to a second vehicle is thereafter started. Therefore, it will be seen to require a long time to start the delivery to the second vehicle after the finish of the delivery to the first vehicle. This problem becomes bigger as the number of vehicles increases.